Returning vote getters and 2015

The 2015 Heisman race is shaping up to be as wide open as any we’ve seen in at least a decade.

Four players return who placed in the top 10 of the 2014 Heisman balloting — TCU’s Trevone Boykin, Ohio State’s J.T. Barrett, Mississippi State’s Dak Prescott and Arizona’s Scooby Wright — but together they totaled just 359 points while appearing on 267 ballots (out of 894 tabulated).

By comparison, last year’s race returned three players from the 2013 top 10 who totaled 2,423 points while appearing on 926 ballots.

You have to go back to 2006 to find a season where fewer points and ballots from a Heisman top 10 came back to play college football. That’s when Brady Quinn returned, fresh off a fourth-place finish in 2005 that saw him appear on 156 ballots while totaling 191 points.

Now, if you are of the mind that the 2005 race is a bit of an anomaly, given that the trophy was later vacated, it requires going back to 2002 to find a race that returned fewer points and ballots than the coming 2015 season.

That was the last year that no players returned from the top 10 of a Heisman balloting. That year’s balloting, won by Carson Palmer of USC, featured nine seniors and one player — Willis McGahee of Miami — who would turn pro early.

In fact, 2002 was one of just 10 seasons that featured a Heisman top 10 that did not return a player the following season.

Here’s a look at the players who returned after appearing in the last five Heisman top 10s